


Across the Country

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s02e25 Anasazi, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 06:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12075585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: During "Anasazi," Scully drives across the country with an unconscious Mulder in the back seat.





	Across the Country

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

It’s early morning when they start out.  Scully picks a time when most people won’t be out and about yet, because she knows she’s going to look ridiculous dragging Mulder into the car and she doesn’t want too many eyes on them.  He’s completely dead weight but she manages, bracing him against her as she walks down to the car.  She settles him into the back seat.  She considers lying him down across its width but decides that, all things considered, it’s better to have him belted in.  So she leaves him in a quasi-sitting position.  He’s really more slumped than sitting.  She doesn’t like looking at him like this.  It’s a little eerie.

“You good?” she asks him, feeling the need to say something even though she knows he’s not going to answer her.  “Hang in there, okay?  It won’t be too long now.”

She closes the back door, gets into the driver’s seat, and buckles her own seatbelt.  She checks the map again, then heads west.

 

It’s not safe to drive for too long without taking a break: everyone knows that.  On the other hand, while it’s a less widely discussed issue, it’s probably not that safe to get out of the car and leave an unconscious, hunted man alone in the back seat.  Scully tries to strike a balance.  She’s packed food, and she’ll stop and eat that in the car, where she can still keep an eye on Mulder.  She’ll check on him and take a look at the dressing on his shoulder (she has to inject him again later in the day, so the sedatives don’t wear off, and she makes sure they’re parked in as secluded a spot as possible for that, because getting arrested and having to explain what she’s doing is the last thing she needs).  Or she’ll walk near the car to stretch her legs, take a few breaths, shake out her arms preparatory to getting back on the road.  She has to leave the vicinity of the car sometimes—bathroom, coffee—but she tries to make it as brief as she can.  She knows what she has to do.  Keep him safe.  Keep him stable.  Get to New Mexico as quickly as possible.

 

A lot of the time on cases, they argue about what to play on the radio.  It’s never a serious argument—all in good fun—but sometimes they end up listening to the stupidest things.  One time Mulder made her listen to some talk radio show that was all crank theories about Stonehenge.  He claimed it was very instructive.

This time, he doesn’t get a say about the radio.  Scully gets to choose everything.  She turns it to the classical station that he always tells her is boring and listens to that for a while.  When she’s ready for a change, she flips through stations and lights on one that’s playing only music from the seventies.  There’s a song she remembers vividly from her prom.  She sings along, loud and off-key.  No one says a word.

She imagines Mulder teasing her if he were awake.  Of course, she wouldn’t be singing if he were; she knows she doesn’t have a good voice.  But for a moment she imagines it, the way he might smile at her and comment on her taste in music.  She imagines herself smiling back, maybe telling him why she likes the song, maybe talking about how ridiculous her prom night got.

Then, she thinks, they might flip the station.  She does that now.  Some of the rock music Mulder likes.  She listens to that for a while.

 

She does have to sleep at some point, she knows that.  She considers getting a motel room, decides that there’s no way they wouldn’t attract attention there, and determines that she’ll have to sleep in the car.  She pulls off the highway that night, somewhere in Arkansas, and looks for a likely spot to stop.  There’s a side street, not too busy, just a couple of cars parked, that looks like it might fit the bill.

She could sleep in the driver’s seat, but she always gets a crick in her neck when she sleeps sitting up, and that’ll make driving tomorrow miserable.  So she climbs into the back.  She puts her shoes neatly on the floor and then carefully unbuckles Mulder; they’re not moving anymore, and she might as well let him stretch out some too.  She checks his shoulder again and then lays him down partway across the seat.  She has to leave his feet on the floor, though, or there’ll be no room for her.  She curls up on the seat herself then, her head close to his.  “Hey,” she whispers.  “This isn’t ideal, I know.  But it’ll only be this one night, with any luck.”

She’s used to sleeping alone, these days.  A lot of the time she likes the space and the quiet.  But tonight she doesn’t have much space, only half of a car’s back seat, and she hears Mulder’s breathing, low but steady, as she’s drifting off.   Somehow it doesn’t bother her.  She wakes up with her arm draped over his, and that’s not uncomfortable either.  In this situation, there aren’t a lot of lines.

 

They’re back on the highway in the morning, but Scully doesn’t drive for long before she pulls into a rest stop.  She goes in quickly, uses the bathroom and brushes her teeth there, and gets coffee.  A bottle of water too, because she’s running low. 

She checks on Mulder again when she gets back to the car.  She wishes she could give him some of her water.  He hasn’t had anything to eat or drink this whole time, and even though he seems fine and it’s really better to keep him out until the effects of the drugs wear off, she can’t help worrying about that a little.  She touches his hand quickly before she gets back into the driver’s seat.  She turns on the radio again, to check the traffic report.

 

She never realized, until now, just how important their conversations are.  Of course, she knew that she liked talking to him when they were driving somewhere, at least seven times out of ten (the rest of the time, he was getting on her nerves, sometimes deliberately).  But she never really thought about the reason that she never finds their travels boring, no matter how long they spend in the car.  She’s thinking about it now, though.  Because this is boring, almost unbelievably so.  She wouldn’t have thought that it would be, considering how important it is that they get to New Mexico and how many people might want to stop them.  Any adrenaline from that seems to have worn off some hundreds of miles ago, though, somewhere during the twenty-seven hours since they’ve left DC (eight more hours to go, at least, and that’s if she doesn’t stop).

“Hey,” she says.  “How’re you doing back there?”  No answer, of course.  “I’ve never been in this part of Oklahoma before.  What about you?”  She doesn’t know why she keeps asking questions.  Maybe because it makes it seem less like she’s talking to herself, and if she thinks about the fact that she’s talking to herself, she’ll start wondering if she’s literally driven herself crazy.  “You’re not missing much, anyway,” she says.  “Just a lot of highway.”

She talks on for a little bit, nothing very important, mostly remember-whens from the past few years.  Three years, that’s what it’s been.  Three years, which doesn’t seem like much, and yet more has happened to her in that time than she would have believed possible.  Has happened to them.  Together.

“Mulder,” she says.  “It’s going to be okay, you know that?  You’ll be fine when you wake up.  And I’m sorry I had to shoot you.  I don’t usually shoot my friends.”  She tries for the joke, thinking he’d probably crack a smile if he were awake.  “But that’ll be all right too.  I’ve been checking, and it’s healing.  And when we’re in New Mexico, we’ll get that tape translated.  We’ll find out who did this, Mulder.  Who did this to you.  To us,” she says, the words slipping out without her thinking about them.  But they are an us now and have been for a long time, since some moment she can no longer name.  He can’t hear her anyway. 

She’d like to tell him how sorry she is about his father.  But that should wait, she thinks, until he’s awake.

 

There are people looking at them as they drive up.  They’re here, they’ve arrived safely, and with any luck, they’ll be getting some answers. 

An old man walks towards the car, and Scully knows she should get out and greet him.  But before she does, she glances into the back seat.  “We’re here, Mulder,” she says.


End file.
